This is the English reading version of the Dutch news item MitCAD is not finished yet and already has a very impressive parts library!.
Mitcad’s parts library was updated to version 2.9.0 today: lots of parts you can drag straight into your assembly.
Bolts and nuts were there from the start. The library began on 8 October as a fastener library and was renamed the parts library on 16 October. What was added in the weeks after that is the rest: profiles and connectors for six aluminium profile systems, sheet material, timber and wood connectors, steel tubes to EN 10219-2 and EN ISO 1127, bearings, linear guides, gears and belts. 766 parts in all.
What is more remarkable than the contents is where it sits. The library is a git repository that you fetch yourself, and at the start Mitcad already has its own library in the list, with an index of libraries by others. A design remembers which version it used, so older designs keep working when the library is updated, and automatic updating stays off until you switch it on. Putting a library of your own on a shared folder works too. The licence is listed per part: the library under the MIT licence and the fasteners under CC0.
My verdict: a library like this is the dream of many an engineer, and in FreeCAD it was hidden away in an addon. And it does not belong in an addon, it belongs with the assembly workbench. It is good to see that a good UI and buttons you can actually find are possible in an open source package too, instead of the hunt through wiki pages, macros and addons. I have tested Mitcad myself: it took literally 2 minutes to download and install the library. And this program is not even finished yet and it is already in there properly! My compliments to MitCAD. Keep an eye on this site for updates and tests, I will keep following the parts library.